


Les fleurs du mal

by hypsoline



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alcohol, Anal Sex, Canon Era, Drugs, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Opium, Orientalism, Romanticism, Underage Prostitution, XIX century drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 10:53:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7931908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypsoline/pseuds/hypsoline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Montparnasse is on his way home early one night when he is invited by Jehan to go up to his place. Things happen. </p><p>"“Every place has been discovered, conquered, explored. But the human mind, that is. I hope you don’t mind my little experiment.”<br/>Montparnasse, quiet as an animal and equally as attentive says nothing of which he doesn’t know or understand, answers with nailing at Jehan’s pale hips, opening his trousers. This much he understands, not fancy words and philosophy. You have no use for those when growing up on the streets usually. So they kiss, and it’s becoming feral now and both urging with need, but patience, because the night has yet much more to offer."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Les fleurs du mal

***

 

He is bored, the moon is quite high in the sky and there is nothing Paris can offer him tonight.

He scowls down at his cuffs, perfectly prim and crisp under the moonlight. He might as well just head home, call it a night. Maybe getting some sleep might help this awful dark circles that have been appearing underneath his eyes. Montparnasse had been washing his face with rose water every night and morning to get rid of those as of indication of one of this female acquaintances. Stupid as may be, makes him smell wonderful in any pile of shit le Patron-Minette drags him to.

The lamp lights are limp even at this early hour of the night and there are women standing underneath one of them, cackling at something or someone. By the looks and colours of their dress, Montparnasse knows exactly who they are. He tips his hat at them and they woo him in response, laughing. More scary and gloom as darkness may be, the night always brought him more familiar faces than the day. It certainly brought him a lot more clientèle.

Montparnasse is used to walk the night not only to slit away throats but also to get some easy money at some back alley on his knees.

Tonight seems dull, the heavy atmosphere in the vapors of the night suggest a chance of rain and thunder and he is in no mood to ruin his jacket.

 

Montparnasse is as immerse in his thoughts that he doesn’t notice a shadow of a young man passing by. They clash, Montparnasse’s impeccable velour suit against the man’s mustard coat. What an odd, ugly colour and what an odd man, as he blabbers about, clearly a student, by the weak frame and stubble.

“Watch it.” Snaps Montparnasse.

“My apologies…”

He replies absent mindledly but Montparnasse gets a closer look at him as he picks up a dark colored book he dropped.

The boy is a red headed and soft faced, the colour of his jacket makes him seem even paler under the moonlight, almost grey. Montparnasse recognizes him as a Musain regular, one of those revolutionary boys he has seen around. A quiet one that only stands out for the wrong reasons. Up close he isn’t nearly that ugly although Montparnasse prefers strong brunettes. He looks meek and there is a certain cuteness in his awkward physique, freckled by nature and not by field work, with an expensive looking flower patterned-tie. If Montparnasse was in a day for meek types this would be just the case. But Montparnasse is always in for “rich types”. His mind suddenly clears from the dirty dimmed light street.

“I know you. An acquaintance of Courfeyrac?”

“Yes. And I know of you too, I believe you have also frequented le Musain?” The man blushes and holds his hand to him. “Jehan Prouvaire.”

“Montparnasse.” He takes his hand, shakes it firmly for a second. “The only name I ever had, but I will let you call me a few others if you wish.”

Jehan smiles timidly, perhaps not quite getting the joke right away.

 

They start walking the darkened road. Apparently they’re going the same way. Jehan doesn’t tell Montparnasse how he knows more than he lets on of him and neither does Montparnasse demand an explanation. He knows fully of what Courfeyrac might say of him or of their brief encounter at the back alley of the café last month. And what the others might say of them. By ignorance, Montparnasse may be poor but he will never let himself live a life full of poverty.

Jehan doesn’t seem curious at all however, and stays there with a half-smile on his lips, trying to look for stars in the sky.

“It’s going to rain later.” he mutters, hands in pockets.

Montparnasse is getting quite bored of his silent companion to be honest when it starts raining. Then pouring. And both men end up racing the fowl streets for shelter.

They seem to escape underneath an old tavern’s broken shack. This road is depressing, closer to an open field where some new migrant citizens from _la campagne_ still keep their horses, tents and seem to be building new houses. Montparnasse knows it well, there are only beggars and students’ rooms, nothing too dignified. Only drinking taverns, cafés and an old church.

“Your clothes.” The red head says softly, pointing at his jacket now darker with rain water. “You’re wet.”

“Yes. It is indeed raining.” Scoffs Montparnasse with disdain, upset at ruining his jacket yet again. He listens to the rain and plays with the black curls coming out from underneath his hat. Disgusting rain, seems to bring all of the sewage from Paris up instead of down, cleaning it. Jehan is still staring at him, standing over Montparnasse covering him further with his own very ugly and very mustard coat.

“I don’t live far away from here. If you would like to come up.”

Montparnasse wasn’t expecting this from the poet of the bunch. He nods with his head, his curls bob up and down and Jehan exhales happily.

“I’ll get you some tea and a blanket.”

He pulls Montparnasse closer inside his mustard coat and they leave.

  
  
***

 

Montparnasse hadn’t exactly planned his night to be this way but wouldn’t object to it. Maybe he could snipe some things at the student’s apartment. These rich student types kept a lot of oddities at their homes they wouldn’t miss, and Jehan didn’t seem the same type as Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac, naturally bourgeois and a Nouveau riche, kept his wardrobe, poise and personality perfectly so. Ostentious, almost like Montparnasse, he wished his presence to be known.

Jehan was so different. He was obviously calm but nervous, tired, awfully dressed (the awful mustard jacket tearing at the seams), but not in a bourgeois kind of way. He smelt of old money and nobility. Not used to bringing strangers, night walkers, _prostitutes_ , to his home of course.

But Montparnasse didn’t really care too much, whatever label he would fit it and wear it on his lapel like a blooming rose.

Jehan grins to him the whole time, enjoying the closeness of the jacket over them.

“T’was partly luck that led me to you, part Aphrodite herself. I have just seen the moon in your eyes.”

They turn a corner, then another. Old buildings mixed with new, plaster and gargoyle figures, darkened by the humid scent of the night rain.

“With this rain, more like Saint Peter.”

“No Saint would lead me to you, _monsieur_.”

And Montparnasse scoffs at this audacity _I beg your pardon_ , but he likes it, bats his lashes and drawls like purr.

 

“Where do you live?”

 

***

Jehan’s apartment is nothing short of extraordinary. It’s circular, and old tower that got rebuilt together with a set of apartments. Montparnasse is quite sure he has stumbled across those things in engravings, chivalrous romances, antique shops and the likes when Patron-minette had to loot any older houses and abandoned chateâus. Surely only owls could live in such a place.

But no. Such an owl was Jehan.

The walls covered in tapestries portraying flowers and small animals eating fruit, gold on black and black on gold. Persian robes on a chair, a medieval tapestry right above the bed. Relics from the revolution, lace jackets, pots of flowers and strange plants, dusty jackets from the ten years of horror, a skull over a table and candles being lit by Jehan’s trembling hand as they move inside. More surprises unfold, more books than Montparnasse has ever seen, scattered paper, inking blots on every page.

Even Grantaire is less untidy than this, mutters Montparnasse to himself. Jehan as if hearing it turns backwards to him with reddening ears.

“Pardon my mess. I have a roommate, upstairs. But he is often on vacation. So I often… get carried away with our mutual space.”

 

Montparnasse continues to observe. To his horror, actual medieval figures, stolen from a church mayhaps, observe him back. Headless saints, carrying judgement and wings, saints with no breasts, wood and stone rotten away by time. Jehan had all arranged them in the upper circle of the room, above the curtains. What a macabre scene.

“My my, I would think of this as an… atelier and not your sleeping space.”

“Yes it is my fault. It is the eastern belief our spaces shouldn’t be cluttered with things and what things they are.” He stops a while as Montparnasse takes off his gloves and hat. “But I am a slave to curiosity and beauty and curiously beautiful things.”

Their eyes lock again and Jehan turns a pleasant tone of peach, like one of those medieval maidens he has on the walls. But Montparnasse knows better than to label him a lamb, his audacity has the tentative claws of the wolf. Montparnasse is mostly interested in that darkness of him. The young man however seems to understand the contrary, as he apologizes for himself again, arranging his coat.

“Pardon me, it’s the rain. Courfeyrac had me something to drink. It seems to have gotten me a bit loose tongued.”

“No need to be shy around me, my ears are not those of a maiden as you may know. Besides, you just can’t say no to Courfeyrac can’t you?” Montparnasse is glad is back is turned to the boy now, his grin is more than telling.

 

The room isn’t small, but it’s so crowded it feels more like a shop than a living space. The roof is high, higher than the house plants they did those days. There is a fresco of a plump lady holding a seashell and blowing from it. Next to her a dozen other plump pale girls holding their dresses, their hair blowing in the wind. Some sort of weird fascination rich people had for goddesses and legends, Montparnasse thinks. And flowers, dried mostly, or in pots, a bit all over the place, coloring it even more, making it even more excentric.

As Jehan lits the half dead fire at the ancient fireplace, everything shines or glimmers and Montparnasse realizes yet again as something strokes his leg as he passes by, that Jehan keeps exotic plants and flowers in his place. There are instruments on the table Montparnasse would guess are meant to kill more than heal. And books. A thousand volumes, hoarded in every part of the room, tidy in little ribbons, put away at tea tables, big and used, bound in flesh, old maps, and old paper. The room smells clammy, like a dusty library that hasn’t been opened in a long time. Probably the scent of knowledge.

Jehan apologizes for his soot covered face and cleans it – on the mustard coat no less -, and quickly runs in to shut the windows before more water gets in. He lights a few candles and what looks like incense. Montparnasse waves his hand around, nauseated, it smells like a church now.

“What is this smell?”

“Incense, I got it from a priest, from Rome.”

“A catholic? I wouldn’t take you as religious.”

“Oh I am not much of a believer. But churches make me feel peaceful.”

And wooden statues of crying virgins and mausoleum like stone sculptures Montparnasse thinks, but stays quiet.

They sit down together, a divan meant to old two ladies with big boned dresses back from the days of the old regime. Jehan prepares a glass of absinthe from the tiny three legged table near them. He extends another to his new acquaintance, carefully. They have tea and a few cakes but the cakes look stale and Montparnasse feels the alcohol will warm both of them up better.

“Did you rob Notre Dame? Or perhaps a florist girl selling flowers on the street.”

“Do you, Montparnasse attend churches in this epoch of blasphemy and science?”

“Even if I cared for such things. I never really liked churches, they promise you food and shelter but priests only like you when you’re a child.”

Montparnasse laughs a cruel laugh, a painful wit only he understands and this boy doesn’t, too protected to understand what it is to be so helpless you rely on others. To rely your whole being as a child, as a youth. To rely on the streets. More of these soft faced, student boys, Parisian, from _la Provence_ , they’re all the same and Montparnasse has tasted so many of them. They think themselves men because they study or work, frequent cafés, they think themselves men because they have taken a whore or two.

They have a fortune, a job, even a fiancée to come back to. And they think they know the city! He folds his arms, his cane slips away on the wooden floor and rolls to one exquisite tapestry. Jehan is on the other end of the sofa, brown eyes on his drink. Montparnasse drinks his whole cup, drops his face on his hands and looks at the fire.

 

So Jehan finally speaks.

“Do you know why they call it the Mont Parnasse?”

“What??”

“Mont Parnassus. Do you know of why they chose such a name for such a place in Paris?”

“I know of it.” He lied. It was common practice for him to lie about things he didn’t know in order to sound smarter. With a quick hand he steals another chocolate from the other tiny table, the one next to him full of sweets and flasks. He regrets it immediately, it’s a mint one.

Jehan proceeds, watering his plants.

“Mont Parnassus is in Greece.”

“You seem to know a lot about Paris.”

“About Paris yes, its past. Old things, forgotten.”

Now Montparnasse is less bored out of his mind, still pouting like a child at mass waiting for the sermon to be over.

“Your name. Or rather chosen name,”, Jehan gulps from his cup “It dates to the 17th century, when these… poetry students would recite poetry on its hills, they believed it to be home of the nine Muses of the greek arts. What’s become of it you already know.”

He takes another sip. That was the longest Montparnasse heard the boy say without blabbering about.

“My name is where I am from. That is all.” He throws a leg over one of Jehan’s tighs, the warm bringing them together.

“Before, I was a nobody, just a _gamin_. Paris swallows you, like all big cities. But you are able to leave your mark, to give yourself a name if you’re smart. You’re not from here are you.”

“No… I come from a village in La Bretagne.”

“Your accent would give you away if you spoke louder, like a proud Parisian. But you are too quiet spoken. Are you too noble or humble for that?”

Jehan smiles. He smells like old money, Montparnasse is sure.

“Nobility of blood doesn’t matter.”

“You seem to be quite interested in it. In the past of others.”

Jehan gets up, carefully moving Montparnasse’s leg away, serves himself of another green minimal cup.

“What is with you students and la fée verte?” he hisses, joking, as if he had never heard of that one before. His lips already red from the alcohol, ready to move on.

Jehan gulps his cup this time. Montparnasse opens his legs on the sofa and stars to lay on it. This time Jehan knows what to do, the absythe being a powerful counselor and Montparnasse himself a sinuous dark haired invitation since he stepped in.

Jehan inhales his pale neck like perfume, alabaster, turns his nose and Montparnasse playfully kisses him on his thin lips. There is something disgustingly sweet about this man, too sweet for his tastes. But he remembers himself he can trust him for shelter and this for the night.

Jehan pours him another drink, smirking coyly at the green liquid.

“We like the green fairy because we, unreligious sacrilegious scientific students, often dream of fairies you see. Brings us back to our origins, our natural origins, before societies. It is harsh on your throat because it is pure, and sweet because it is a remedy.”

“Nothing quite as helpful for artists and students to make it through another day, I understand it.” He answers amused.

The drink is an incredible green, it shines in Montparnasse’s hand as brilliant as an emerald. It tastes as most alcohol does, rough and harsh, warms him right up. The rain feels so distant outside now.

“Also you got me wrong. I care as much for science as I care for Catholicism. I like the history of things, of things of old, but I am a poet.”

 

“I should have known!”

 

Montparnasse laughs, one hand above his eyes, open mouthed without grace. Jehan! One of those poet types. _Of course._ Surrounded by metropolis and dreaming of nature, the gentlest of his group of friends, probably a younger child too. Left to books and the greenhouse instead of horse riding.

Jehan goes to a big ebony table and starts getting something like tobacco ready. Montparnasse had it a few times, sniped away from some hot shot at the theater or at the back alley of a shop. He fucked a lawyer once who chewed tobacco; He hasn’t had a lot of chances to smoke the thing itself so naturally he is curious. That man was great at tearing his bottom, but his mouth always tasted foul, his teeth were yellow as much as his pockets were full of gold, so Montparnasse endured naturally. He hadn’t gotten bored sometime with him, and left, like he always did. It’s better to taste the new, the unpredictable. This boy he picked up on this stormy night is exactly that.

“I’ve got something else.”

He burns it on a tiny china plate, meticulous with each grain.

 “Every place has been discovered, conquered, explored. But the human mind, that is. I hope you don’t mind my little experiment.”

Montparnasse, quiet as an animal and equally as attentive says nothing of which he doesn’t know or understand, answers with nailing at Jehan’s pale hips, opening his trousers. This much he understands, not fancy words and philosophy. You have no use for those when growing up on the streets usually. So they kiss, and it’s becoming feral now and both urging with need, but patience, because the night has yet much more to offer.

“Have no fear dear, this is meant to enlighten you and me.”

To enlighten and soften, more likely. Montparnasse has heard of those eastern drugs, of the opium parlours of the Orient, of the South American Indian medicines, which, combined with fasting regimes could produce dormant bodies and avid minds. Avid orgasms is what he came here for. So he waits; his right hand snakes around Jehan’s waist, to come.

They smoke it together, their oxygen and drugs mingling, their clothes dropping to the floor, Montparnasse’s sweaty back on the divan now as he curls his legs around Jehan’s torso.

The air thick with the drug, becomes jade, green before dawn, the last hours of the night has always been Montparnasse’s favorite when he was at his most awake, and yet, he feels sleepy.

“There are things we know nothing of, in the world, you see.”

Jehan takes his lips in his hand like cherry, bites them. Montparnasse’s body feels electric, sweating from every pore, his bottom aching to be filled as they squirm and move together. The rhythm of the waves, back and forth, docile at first.

 His mind, however, is drowsy, like he is drunk on something, drunk on a strange fog, a strange red box laying atop Jehan’s desk. A red box carved in jade and a distant smell of powder and pepper and something else.

The smells play around the room, they take them back to far away exotic lands. Jehan puffs and gives the pipe back to Montparnasse.

“All yours now.”

“I’m sure we must look like two sultans right now. Exquisite.”, he dreams and Montparnasse looks around for things to steal but- he can’t, he too begins imagining it, Jehan’s words dropping like honey trapping him like a fly, the green smoke curling around his lungs, filling him whole.

Their erections lay bare unattended as they smoke, engrossed and pink, which his puff becoming more sensible, which each puff and kiss Montparnasse becoming more wimpy, needy, craving his nails on Jehan’s back.

“Make me cum.”

But Jehan is enjoying the game a while longer, and appreciates Montparnasse’s beauty instead; the way his fringe curls, the way he can kiss and bite that prestine skin and make him moan and leave nothing but the scent of a kiss.

“Your locks are so dark and your skin so pale, your eyes follow me like those of a cat. Tell me Montparnasse, were your parents from Paris? Was your mother an oriental dancer who fell in love with an aristocrat? Was it the other way around?”

Montparnasse allows himself to laugh. Again with this.

His mother, a Parisian whore, dead when Montparnasse was ten, old enough to pursue a life of robbery and his mother’s job. There is high pay for beautiful young boys in Paris. His dad, someone else forgotten, under the gravel, at the gallows, overseas at some colony. _The streets swallow you and spit you out_ as the lowest kind you can be, and here this foolish student is talking of riches, of ottoman princes led astray by Paris’ liberties.

“My parents—“ Jehan begins softly, sadly, always in his melancholic tone that begins to irritate against Montparnasse’s skin and his arousal. “My parents are both aristocrats but I have no interesting lineage. I have always dreamt of one.”

“Of being born from a whore?”

Jehan grins and licks his lips.

“Perhaps my comment was a tad indelicate. I meant to praise your unusual beauty, and blood.”

“My blood you say. What’s running through you seems to know very well what to do however. To me.”

Jehan kneels over Montparnasse’s half naked body. His burning need for him showing now, he slicks his cock with oil from a tiny purple flask, slips some around Montparnasse’s entry too, rubs it with his thumb. Outside there is the roar of the tempest, outside the world is crumbling with rain and lighting and Montparnasse feels it too, his back arches as Jehan plays with him, mouths his cock. Montparnasse bites his fist _yes, yes_.

 

“Come inside me.”

 

He is heavily drugged, otherwise he would have been attentive. Jehan breaks in Montparnasse with more vigor and might than he has ever seen from the young man. Montparnasse bites his lower lip, his ass stinging from pleasure and pain numbed by the misty air of the room. His own cock swallowing red in between Jehan’s slippery fingers as he strokes him.

Jehan bites at his chest, forces his tongue on Montparnasse’s mouth, squishes his cock inside Montparnasse. And talks, and the walls around them melt, all the velvet and church statues melt around them as they fornicate.

“Montparnasse-”, he begins, rubs Montparnasse’s balls and Montparnasse hears nothing else.

Vacant eyes going white, there is a torpor in him, a vibration. He feels it right from the tip of his head to his cock. Everything feels like fog. His arse swallowing Jehan’s cock, the man pounding against him mad with lust, mad with love, murmuring against his neck.

Jehan speaks but no sound comes. They grind against each other and his eyes go white. Montparnasse doesn’t feel anything anymore besides pleasure, his body is burning and his mind is a fog. He feels himself climaxing as Jehan goes down to bite him, still forcefully penetrating him. There comes the time when Jehan too, collapses on him. He doesn’t pull off immediately, instead breathing in Montparnasse and kissing his chest, where he left a trail of bites.

The room feels clammy, smells of sex and smoke, the candles are all but a blur in the velvet. The heart of the world is right there, amongst old volumes, amongst the old masters and poets.

They are finished once, but Montparnasse keeps a tight lock in his legs. The adrenaline from the alcohol or the drugs, Jehan still hard and impetuous inside him. And he chuckles shyly, and moans as he kisses Montparnasse again.

 

Sacred medieval art still beaming them, their open wooden eyes older than time itself and Montparnasse laughs, his white slender neck curving to the side. A place of ghosts and that unholy jade colored scent that became fog and became sweat on their bodies, became electricity and unfolded the vices of the night.

“You take pleasure in sacrilegious acts?” mutters Jehan for a breath, for a second, when they separate with a half-smile.

Jehan bumps against him harder, something stings where his knee is bruised from some other last night, a black alley and a drunkard of a reckless. Montparnasse had stolen his wallet after they were done. But he barely recalls it now if only for flesh memory.

“It’s not the act.” Montparnasse explains, more coherently than in dreams “I take pleasure in many things I’m not supposed to.”

There is a dagger on the table near them, beautifully carven, Persian, a sapphire adorning it. Jehan eyes it, and so does Montparnasse. Montparnasse was wrong, this boy is no virgin, no delicate flower, no lamb; he is a glutton, clumsy at first but emotionally driven, he wishes to experience all the thrills at the same time, so he is as inexperienced as looks. A carnivorous flower. So like Montparnasse and so unlike at the same time.

“Are you afraid to use it on me?” the curled haired blurts out, spit shining on his red mouth.

Jehan swallows and licks his lips, traces the curves of his body with its sharp blade, made for killing, for maiming, now a relic to open letters of some sort. He cuts Montparnasse twice. Not deep enough to alarm but deep enough to draw blood, right under his nipple, the second, on his shoulder. All wounds he will regret later, but now there is only pleasure and pain, pain and pleasure.

“Blood looks remarkably good on you.” Jehan is pantless, a macabre glint on his eyes. Montparnasse laughs; blood is his profession too. He is slightly pissed over the cuts on his skin, but so turned on he will worry about those later, those tiny cuts in his flesh being licked away by Jehan as he drops the dagger on the floor, kisses him with blood stained lips and moves his hips.

They move harder, blood between their lips, alcohol on their tongues, the smoke ever present.

“Come on in… darken my birth even more, bite me, spoil me.”

“And what if I say I love thee?”

“If you did, would you be so cruel to drug me?”

“I feel as I do.” The bard suddenly blushes even more, his brows hidden by his bangs. A poor student, a poor liar with a good cock.

A spectrum of colour flashes through his eyes and his skin is electrified. He moans, he needs this and licks his lips and waves his hips as a sign. The ecstasy on him is louder than bells now, the rain outside, the sounds of the night, their throats. Loud and clear. And the room feels even heavier, the velvet dropping over them like the water outside.

Jehan pants as he speaks, his voice usually soft now so nifty, so fearful, his red locks falling on his eyes turning him mad. Montparnasse whispers in his ear, inaudible over the storm, and Jehan goes off with a silent grunt, the climax of a quiet poet.

He comes hot, against Montparnasse’s dormant body, their chests are now glues together. It’s so hot, it’s so hot in this godforsaken room, all the velvet, the brocade, a bonfire, burning wine at the pits of hell. Ages old dust glues itself to his skin drenched with sweat, Jehan licks him over the shoulder, his chest, his wound. What seemed like opulence to him only a tingle in his mind, his throat dry, his vision blurry of angels, nay demons, nay, something else. Jehan grabs his chin, kisses him over his red bitten lips.

Tamarisk, spices, fruits, vivid colors, and that jade fog, like a ghost stuck on his throat. Jehan recites facts, love induced murmurs, as if around them tan, gold dripping girls in white veils danced to the music of the storm, of their lovemaking. Montparnasse moans and in an instant his eyes focus on the canvas behind Jehan’s back, lotuses and water lilies.

“And now, for the grand finale… the death of lovers.”

Montparnasse breathes hard, his lips luscious, his eyes quivering and lilac from the night, wanting in distress.

“If it is death the ultimate consolation, I would call climax the greatest pretender.”

Montparnasse can barely make out the words, seeing out of focus, exhausted from cuming and everything else.

“Do you agree with me?” Jehan tries it again, smelling at him, drinking him in with his eyes just as Montparnasse is ready to pass out at any minute. His mouth feels irony, like the taste of blood, and of something else.

And Jehan, poor student hiding richesses, timid Jehan kept talking, murmuring soft words that glued to Montparnasse’s throat like lava as he kissed it. As he recited it. Montparnasse was a muse, his muse, with the boy-ish enchants of a demigod, the curls of a Caravaggio boy, the lap of a moon goddess, white as marble. Montparnasse was Ophelia, drowned amongst flowers and the heavy scent, the heavy room turned into a deep black lake, the heavy boy on top of him turned into pleasure and pain both.

Ecstasy runs through his body again, numbing him, cradling him. He feels Jehan still inside him pulling out, his cum dropping like pearls on the robes underneath them.

“What did you put in the—“

Montparnasse begins to wonder, but his eyes are green and dry, and his throat sore, his whole body limp and Jehan swallows him again, finishing him off. It doesn’t take a lot.

“Decay, love, death and life. All together in this.” Two hands over Montparnasse’s neck now, tight enough to bruise like a raw kiss, never tight enough to hurt.

Montparnasse is merged whole by the water, the smoke nesting in his lungs, his heart a beating drum, the whole of the ocean swallowing him to its deepest depths, but it is only Jehan’s body on the top of him causing him to drown, so he pushes the red head to the side and feels the tide changing again.

The storm has passed over and he dreams of nothing at all.

 

***

 

_Is there anything quite as wretched, vulgar and romantic as picking up a well-dressed, willing man whore from the streets and doing to him what you both wish to do, singing him hymns meant for pure hearted maidens longing for their knights?_

_Hymns distorted by the raw of flesh on flesh, of both male sexes, of howls to the moon. And suddenly pagan meets christian, churches blossom from their ruins like ghosts in the night, their bells tolling and tolling. Green fairies, lake maidens with their breasts bare and white as milk, riding on unicorns who walk on clovers, who walk over an older city, an older Paris, she is Lutetia. And the city doesn’t smell like shit after rain, and the poppies blossom again. Like they used to. Poppies, bluebells, roses, red roses with big thorns, circling both lovers, uniting them in life and death. Poets read greek poetry on the hilly sides of what would be called Mont Parnassus. They wear nazarene robes, they lit candles, they are observed by all the old gods which came to this place before the humans did. Celtica, La Gaulle, the romans and their Holy Roman Empire; catholics, inquisitors, revolutionaires, blood splatters over the clovers and the poets stop._

_Old Paris still a child, her face soft her hair wild with the winds of the past and the future. What is to become of her? Her gown is white, sliding over her shoulders as she waves to the stars saying goodbye to the sphynxes in the sky, to Babylon, Pompeii, Palmyra, Carthage, Delphi. Choirs of angels with their multitude of wings, their ominous eyes, their terrifying voices, singing._

_“Is there anything quite as beautiful as dreaming of the old in this decaying present. Is there anything as romantic as loving aimlessly the creatures of the night, the whore. Is there anything as romantic and beautiful as life for it loves her sister death. Is there anything as beautiful as fucking and loving, knowing you are meant to live and die, a sphynx too.”_

_“And now, for the grand finale… the death of lovers.”_

***

 

Montparnasse wakes up in the same place he fell asleep in. The rays of sunlight coming from the dusty velvet curtains can only mean the sun has risen or is about to. He is alone in the divan, Jehan is asleep over some papers on his big table, sitting up with his face covered by his arms, wearing a robe and a remarkable amount of splattered ink on his hair. An early riser. Better this way, Montparnasse thinks.

There is something banging at his head and he sits up, only to find he is still sticky from last night. Sweeter than hell itself but not worth a second shot. Montparnasse remembers barely anything, but his boy remembers it more; the green smoke, the exotic places, the medieval sculptures, the knife cut below his nipple and on his shoulder, pink and small but healing.

Montparnasse is wearing a silken robe Jehan was chivalrous enough to throw on him sometime during the night. It’s covered in flowers. He probably dropped it on him as his breath eased and his drug finished, because there is no more inside the flask.

Well, better to get dressed.

What a strange boy. And what a strange night, but Montparnasse has seen worse.

He tosses the student a final look as he composes himself in front of the golden mirror. His eyes are still cloudy but that too will be gone with time, together with the pounding sensation against his arse. Skinny boys are the worst, all bone and arms too strong to be experienced.

 

He checks himself. Gloves, hat, a cravat to cover his sins, red lips to flaunt them. There is a small purse coin on top of a few books and scattered writings. He takes it without thinking, hand swift and piercing as his gaze. The purse and a small biscuit dropping on his jacket pocket.

He is silent as a feline as he closes the door of the apartment, makes his way to the dusky pink sky of Paris, all the foul smells of the after rain mingling together, industrial and organic. He prefers it to the atmosphere inside the room, which continues to lure him in, with perfume as heavy as honey that lingered to his back like honey. Sweet to the point of being nauseating, to the point of being dangerous. And Montparnasse knows of dangerous.

Far away a bunch of crows _caw caw_ away as the city begins to live again.

He feels odd, heavy and in dire need of a shower. It’s Sunday and the church bells toll, for mass. He remembers bits and pieces of their conversation last night, trying to make sense of it all, but his stomach is empty and he has a new wallet to spend. A night full of surprises, but not worth its strangeness and risks again. His head is so, so heavy.

Jehan has killed him and brought him back to life, it feels. The worst drug induced hangover Montparnasse has ever felt.

He hopes he won’t be seeing much of Jehan again and quickly skips inside a lost alley, right into his own forgotten apartment.

 

 ***

 

La Vie Parisienne waits for nobody and some nights are meant to be forgotten.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift for a certain someone, I hope you enjoyed it! Sorry I took so long.
> 
> There are many references in this fic but I hope they will be quite easy to grasp. Title is a reference to Baudelaire and there are allusions to pre-Raphaelites’ line of work, even a Oscar Wilde’s “Dorian Grey” here and there because Jehan was born too early. He is a romantic man of the XIX century indeed.  
> Les fleurs du mal is a poetry book by Baudelaire. It was not published until 1857 but it was quite the scandal at the time for mentioning sexuality, lesbianism and other “crude” things for the society of the time. 
> 
> The Notre Dame and a few older medieval churches and cathedrals, were indeed in shambles and poor conditions around the early XIX century. After the baroque and the rococo which demanded rich and colorful constructions, the sober enlightenment and the political turmoil France suffered between the XVIII and XIX centuries, gothic art was frowned upon as ugly and uncultured, un-christian even, the opposite of the much more refined neoclassical style (borrowing from ancient greek and rome and setting a mathematical example for the empire). It was actually after Victor Hugo’s own infamous romance published in 1831, much to do with this romantic sentiment of a long gone past, the cathedral and consequently others suffered their deserved respect and popularity. It was restored after 1844, as the government of King Louis-Philippe I decreed the restoration of the cathedral to bring it back to its former glory.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


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